Had fun the other night chatting on Joe Hakim’s Culture Show on BBC Radio Humberside.

Joe invited Sean Azzopardi and myself onto the show to talk about comics.

Joe’s a great host and as he’s a fan of comics he asks insightful questions. We covered a range of comics related topics from the general attitude to comics in the UK and the US versus other parts of the world, the kind of work we find ourselves doing in comics and some process stuff, as well as some specific projects like Sean’s Sea Shepherd project, and my work so far on Pat Mill’s Space Warp.

Plus we mentioned that we’d decided to figure out what Hull has in terms of a local comics creating scene by setting up a Comics, Drink ‘n’ Draw night.

Over the last year Sean and I have been tabling together locally at some of the Indie and Craft markets since he moved up from London. It’s been interesting, as despite us both doing comics, our work is very different. Sean’s work is predominantly autobiographical work, whereas mine is… well, y‘know, monsters and occult detective stuff. Regardless it’s been great being able to hang out and chat to another comics creator, meet up for a cuppa, discuss work (and 70’s rock, laughs) and even pop over to hang out at his studio in Old Town (at HUB-A) every now and again.

It was with that social aspect for comics creators in mind (let’s face it, a lot of us spend most of our time on our own at the drawing board working late into the night/morning) that we began discussing ways to encourage more local comics people come out into the light to talk to each other. And with that Hull Independent Comics Creatives (HICC) was born. It has its own Twitter feed now >HERE<, and we were promoting the idea by putting a HICC label on our respective local comic event stands. It may well be revived or reincarnated in another form at some point. All of which then led into us trying out the idea of the Hull Comics Drink and Draw event at one of old town’s arts friendly bars, The Brain Jar. We’ll see how that goes I guess.

Anyway, you should go check out Sean’s work over at his PhatComics website or on Twitter @seanazz. He has an exhibition of his Sea Shepherd work running over the next couple of months (Feb – April), Sea Shepherd @ ArtLink and a bunch of great books to check out over at his online store.

If you like those, go check out Sean’s Patreon too.

You can also find a link to Joe’s Radio show >HERE<, and his Twitter feed @joehakim